English pronunciation: Tongue twisters and phonology

Post date: Jun 20, 2019 6:19:55 AM

Try saying this out loud several times, quickly....

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

Having problems??

This is the first line of a famous English tongue twister. They're used for fun; to loosen up your vocal chords before delivering a speech; or to practice clear pronunciation.

Tongue twisters are designed to be difficult for native language speakers so they will be a challenge for English learners.

Part of the problem is that some sounds that are pronounced in English do not exist in other languages.

For example English speakers can happily clearly pronounce words where both the last letter of the first and first letter of the second are consonants for example "Big Bob Roberts".

Similarly some words have consonants next to each other that are pronounced separately, for example "English pancakes".

Consonants are usually produced with a hard sound, this helps with the quick changes from one to the other in English. So if your native language doesn't have double consonants or uses softer sounds you will have to learn to create these English specific sounds by changing your tongue position.

Consonants

The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, in addition to /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are always unaspiratedand un-glottalized, and generally partially or fully voiced. The alveolars are usually apical, i.e. pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching or approaching the roof of the mouth, though some speakers produce them laminally, i.e. with the blade of the tongue.[1]

Studying the phonology of your own language and comparing to English will help you pinpoint differences that you will need to work at when speaking as well as listening.....

Here are some sentences focusing on the English F, R, V and B and doubled consonants.

  • Fred booked the free red-eye flight back to France

  • Very light feather weight black trousers are the flavour of the year

  • Rosemary loved to read a book about Vikings

  • The earth is not flat but the planet Pluto is visible at night

Good luck, speed is not as important as learning to say the vowels Englishly......